By Bertrand Benoit in Hanover - Financial Times.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, on Monday launched a searing attack on top-earning managers and called for “intelligent regulation” of global financial markets in an opening salvo by her Christian Democratic Union to woo left-of-centre voters ahead of key regional elections next month.

In a veiled reference to Wendelin Wiedeking, chief executive of carmaker Porsche, who is reported to have earned at least €60m ($88m, £43m) this year, Ms Merkel slammed the adoption of US-style compensation by German managers.

“Just because an American car executive makes a thousand times what an employee earns, it seems a German car manager should also get the kind of rise he would never grant his workers,” she told the CDU party conference in Hanover. “I don’t want to comment on the success of US car companies, but I’ve been told Japanese carmakers are particularly successful. Bosses there earn only 20 times a worker’s salary.”

Then, in a clear swipe at Gerhard Schröder, her Social Democrat predecessor as chancellor who now chairs a company partly owned by Russian gas company Gazprom, Ms Merkel added: “That’s about double the salary of a German chancellor – that is when he’s not working in Switzerland for the Russian gas sector.”

Reflecting widespread disgust at the severance packages granted to departed Wall Street managers, Ms Merkel said “whoever rewards failed managers with mountains of money is destroying the trust in the social balance of the country”.

The speech was the latest evidence of Ms Merkel’s personal transformation from tough-talking advocate of painful economic reform into the voice of political centrism. CDU officials described it as an attempt by the party to occupy “the political space vacated” by the Social Democratic party, junior partners in Ms Merkel’s grand coalition. The SPD has recently tacked leftwards in an effort to bolster its core vote.

Opinion polls currently suggest that neither the centre-right – the CDU and pro-market FDP – nor centre-left – SPD and the Greens – would win a clear majority in an election. This has forced the two largest parties to rethink their strategies if they are to avoid a second electoral draw – and a new grand coalition – at the 2009 general election.

Once an advocate of equipping Germany for the challenges of globalisation, Ms Merkel insisted globalisation should be shaped to Germany’s image, calling for “an intelligent regulation” of international financial markets, “international social standards”, and for German companies to be shielded from acquisitions by politically motivated sovereign wealth funds.

CDU officials said Ms Merkel had learned the lessons of her “blood-and-tears” electoral campaign of 2005, whose call for radical and painful reforms scared voters and cost the party its early lead over the SPD.

Michael Meister, a senior member of parliament, said Ms Merkel was “trying to occupy the space vacated by the SPD, which is gambling away whatever claim it had to economic competence”.

The first test of her strategy comes next month in regional state elections in Hesse and Lower Saxony, two CDU strongholds.